Thanks for input.
What can you do on MT systems that you can't do with your broker software that brings value to your trades?
What is this MT4, MT5...is this marketing talk?
- Thread starter salamanderforex
- Start date
What can you do on MT systems that you can't do with your broker software that brings value to your trades?
I can Code in MT4 easy all I do is a custom SL placement and trailing via my own logic, leave it on the PC at home and even if I trade via a Tablet it still does it's job from the PC Code.
MT4 is Free, Ninja is $1000 area to buy and to be honest I prefer MT4 on the PC and no Tablet versions of Ninja.
I guess I got you good then? Yer welcome.
Back testing is basically the process of checking our strategy against historical data.
MT4 is great for this but it relies on broker having good historical data and good data is basically non existent in MT4 and MT5.
However, don't let this discourage you, just be aware of the problem and make sure you update the history file of the currency pairs you are testing.
By the way, having updated the history file does not mean that the MT4 bars are correct. Often they will have wrong pricing or wrong time stamps so you should lower your expectations and don't trust what you see on the chart but they are good enough for manual back testing.
I don't recommend automated back testing of a strategy (using EA's) because the results will most likely be unreliable and unless a trader is very very experienced with MT4 and the particular strategy he is testing, he is not going to be able to analyze and understand the results and he could be made to believe that a strategy is profitable when in most cases it is not going to be profitable.....
I've tried loads of EA's backtest positive results, Live leave on for hours and no trades called, back testing works different to demo live forward testing.
Been 10years I bet, since I last tried to automate, vowed to not waste more time on ever again so won't, simples.
Yes EA's will work differently in live accounts because the live market conditions are different plus in the old days when you tried to use EAs, the brokers were more actively involved in cheating their clients so their MT4 server and other tricks interfered with EA trade execution.
Probably because some EAs (the free version) are only allowed to trade on demo accounts.
If you have a successful trading strategy you can make your own EA.
My own code, either tick data wasnt enough to trigger a signal or very few signals but the logic was basic so couldn't see why, but code can only work of indicators which lag, it cant think its turning get in so pointless anyway.
Well, it could have been due to something simple like not having enabled live trading.
I've been using EA's for many years without any problem and I know many other people who are also using EAs.
My trading life would have been so much harder without EAs.
For example now I made a dashboard which displays trade signals on many currency pairs and many time frames and when I click on a signal, MT4 opens up a chart in the correct currency pair and time frame and with the correct template (loaded with my preferred indicators for that particular strategy).
The beauty of MT4 is in its customization and this is the reason why it is so popular.
Don't think so massive school boy error but a long long time ago, had some systems make trades.
I use mt4 code just for SL and TP placement.
Fair play thats a lot of coding!
Ok but if we are making money we can afford to pay someone to do the coding for us and to make our lives easier.
I believe that if something is hard to do manually, we cannot do it for an extended period of time. Eventually we will give up.
As an example, I paid to make an assisting EA for another strategy where I trade the major pairs plus GBP crosses and that strategy would not be easily tradeable manually.
In fact it would not be very profitable if it wasn't for the trade management I have put inside the EA.